After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution Read online

  “Why isn’t he gagged?”

  Greerson frowned.

  “I thought you wanted him to. . . ?”

  The Chief eyed Carlotta meaningfully. Wilhelm suppressed a growl, aware of his animal nature wishing for dominance, expression, for his totality. He gritted his teeth together to resist it, now so deeply embedded in the moment that it was like nothing had come before, teleported into his revenge fantasy-made-flesh, and he looked between his woman and her lover and all the terrible options spilled across him with the force of revelation.

  And Wilhelm started to laugh.

  It was neither deep nor sinister, and yet it was both, spiraling outwards in the long ominous moment as he swung this way and that, then finally rounded back towards Carlotta. She was like a stranger to him – more so for the sweat soaking her torn clothes, her hair in disarray, one eye likewise almost shut from the violence visited on her that Wilhelm considered nothing more than a whiff of what he’d imagined.

  He tugged his lover’s gag aside.

  “Ernest, please. . . .”

  She started to beg so hard the effort failed her, collapsing into tears and a horrified wordless stare which faltered then as well, the strength going out of her tepid last resistance, entirely overcome by a cold hard fatalism she couldn’t avoid. Whatever words came next, they were a gasping, spluttering wreck of incoherent syllables which Wilhelm soon forced to a stop. He bent just enough to slap Carlotta to the ground – were she not held tight by the two Kansas farm boys. The twin on Carlotta’s left grunted, struggling with her dead weight. Wilhelm met the younger man’s eye as he stood erect once more, motioning then until either Milo or Otis understood his unspoken demand.

  The second twin drew his knife and offered it handle first.

  Wilhelm took the blade, nostrils like a dragon’s as he inched mechanically back towards his once-upon-a-time lover. Carlotta’s stammering settled into a steady refrain.

  “Please, Ernest, please, baby baby, you know this is too much, honey, please, Ernest, Ernie, please Ernie-baby. . . .”

  “You don’t want her gagged?” one of the men asked.

  Wilhelm shook his head, not taking his eyes away.

  “You were fucking him behind my back?” he asked her in a low, deadly voice.

  “I told you already,” Carlotta struggled to answer. “I tried to explain, but you –”

  “You thought you were just going to leave?”

  The troopers stood, awkward in the moment and spoilt for reasons why, though Wilhelm himself spoke his question in a flat voice, almost businesslike in tone.

  And Carlotta had no idea what to say.

  “Yes, gag her,” he said at last.

  Wilhelm dismissed her for the moment, his attention angling around now to her pathetic choice made manifest in the sagging flesh of the thoroughly beaten and defeated Magnus.

  “Him?” he said as if the other man might answer. Then Wilhelm snorted a laugh. “Really, Carlotta?”

  “I never chose it, Ernie, you have to understand –”

  Wilhelm’s eyes flicked to the twins instead. They finished forcing on Carlotta’s gag. She shook her head even more fiercely than she looked, still pleading, demanding, wishing.

  “I know you have to punish him, Ernest, I do . . . but please –”

  “Gag her!”

  Magnus tried to shout over Wilhelm’s yell, stifled by his own gag. He stared gauntly at Carlotta as they pushed her to the ground and her gag went back into place, one of her captors wrenching her by her hair, the other almost breaking her arm, while the man she’d shared a bed with through four years of hell on the Airforce Base and then eighteen months in Columbus only watched her finally submit.

  Fresh tears, were they possible, poured out now as Carlotta mutely blubbered, eyes locked on his at last, as if finding some strength at the same time she surrendered to whatever now lay ahead.

  *

  THE BLADE WENT forgotten in the aggrieved Council man’s hand as he inspected the room itself, concrete floored, steel-secured high windows, and only the one door. The Dirty Vixen had precious few supplies to justify a keg room. Chesterton and McGill pinned the owner against the farthest brick wall. The outside street sat at their eye level, the subterranean bunker as quiet as any place could be within the heart of the sanctuary zone.

  Wilhelm’s interest slowly turned back to the other captive, and he picked up an iron rod last in use when this was a tap house in truth. He checked over the flanged end as he moved across the room as if floating to where Magnus started a renewed effort to shake off the two troopers holding him.

  The Councilor swung the rod with a metal crack as it broke the barkeep-philosopher’s leg.

  The gagged man gave a throttled scream and Wilhelm nodded to the pair restraining him. Chesterton tugged aside their captive’s gag and Magnus immediately collapsed forward and started to retch emptily onto the floor.

  It took a difficult kind of resolve for Wilhelm not to bludgeon him to death then and there.

  He backed away instead as a spatter of drool and weak vomit hit the hard, gritty floor. Magnus abandoned holding himself half-upright, collapsing and rolling on the concrete as he clutched his brutalized leg and he twisted about, feverishly checking for his own protection at the same time as Wilhelm circled him, and Carlotta started up again with her own strangled cries.

  “Silence her,” he said and motioned without looking.

  One of the twins punched Carlotta hard in the stomach and she doubled over, but Wilhelm paid no mind, eyes sparkling with coiled menace. He just as abruptly stabbed downwards with the chisel end of the bar and it punched through Magnus’ hand to conjure another series of wild, bloodcurdling shrieks. Wilhelm kicked the barman in the side of the head, stopping his clamor almost instantly as Magnus’ bloodied eyes tracked with difficulty back around the room.

  The Councilor switched efficient looks with Greerson’s handpicked team. Then he glanced towards Carlotta as they hauled her back up to watch again. Nothing could deter those pleading eyes. It was the only play he’d left to her.

  Wilhelm beamed, seeing she knew there was no real chance of rescue here.

  “I no longer need you, Carlotta,” he said to her. “You are part of an old life.”

  She grunted something, squealed. Maybe it was a question. He ignored it.

  “The world has changed,” Wilhelm said. “Five years now. It has shaped us both, made us the people we have become . . . and allowed me to become my true self.”

  He eyed her more closely and Carlotta went still.

  “The strong survive,” he said. “Like the Furies . . . by feeding on the weak.”

  He motioned, waited a moment, then impatiently snapped his fingers for Chesterton and McGill to lift Magnus from the ground. Wilhelm then wasted no time taking the borrowed knife out of his belt and then gutted the struggling barman in three efficient strokes.

  The barkeep’s stomach unfurled wet and contagious-looking across the floor.

  Carlotta gasped, frozen in that horrible moment of stillness before a truly shocking scream might come as she took in the squirming, life-filled ropes of her lover’s intestines spooling out onto the dusty concrete which drank at the blood and plasm with a thirst. The barkeep’s eyes rolled up into his head. A whispery, almost dog-like howl of abeyance came as agony swept up and through him, and the remnants of his guts succumbed to gravity with awful finality. The life went out of Magnus even if he wasn’t dead yet, and thus hollowed-out, the troopers left him to fall once again to the ground.

  Magnus landed in his own squelching remains and twisted autonomously, writhing in a speechless crucifixion. McGill turned away with her palm against her mouth, leaving her freckled offsider Chesterton staring almost equally voiceless at the gruesome catastrophe.

  Wilhelm watched keenly as they let Carlotta kneel. The Kansas twins stood over his ex-lover with caution, their focus on security a blessed distraction from the horror at the edge of their sight.
Yusuf stood alone near the two steps up to the door, regretting now the curiosity which’d driven him to spectate. Wilhelm glanced to him now and lifted his hand as if he might snap fingers again, even though he still held the knife. He tossed the iron rod clanging onto the floor. Magnus blinked rapidly, eyes shut tight, though his mouth opened and closed like a fish. Carlotta’s sobs renewed as she looked up at Wilhelm, her hands together almost praying, clutching herself for support.

  Wilhelm nodded to the farm boys.

  “Out.”

  The troopers knew their business. They left at once and Yusuf went with them. Greerson stepped closer, moving carefully around the dying barman, retrieving the discarded metal rod and motioning his subordinates to follow the others. Wilhelm remained motionless until the Chief joined him, then together they were last to retreat to the door.

  Carlotta looked too stunned to understand what came next. She remembered her gag, and unobstructed, peeled it off, bewildered eyes tracking Wilhelm. First there was hope, her own murder not forthcoming – and then her eyes followed Wilhelm’s dry grin to the twitching cadaver-in-the-making on the fetid ground as Magnus exhaled and then went completely still.

  “Ernie, no,” Carlotta said. “What are you doing? No. No.”

  Greerson took the steps and Wilhelm was right behind him, pausing at the door he held ajar with one hand. He glanced at it and the door’s observation slit. His smile only brightened.

  “How convenient,” he said. “There is a little window. I will be watching, Carlotta. Remember that you chose this, whether you think you did or not.”

  He slammed the door shut before his lover could answer. Straight away, Carlotta’s muffled yells sounded and Greerson shut the door’s latch. True as he’d said, there was room for Wilhelm to stand at the Perspex slit and stare bloodlessly into the room.

  The Councilor’s smile slowly grew more fixed as Carlotta’ enraged and desperate cries fell away, and she turned instead to stare at the body of her lover, for only a short while longer lying dead on the floor.

  It took Magnus almost seven minutes to turn.

  Chapter 2

  THE SWORD WEIGHED too heavily in an arm already throbbing with such dull pain that Tom could barely register it amid all the hyperventilation and bloodlust. Shocking, retributive violence hung like a profound silence in the air contested only by the rattling noise from leaves and debris blowing against the building in the gale outside. Tom’s halting breaths sounded like a bellows in that aftermath, blood and flecks of meat still dripping from dead Kent’s longsword proven a suitably arcane instrument for his medieval punishment of a crime maybe the dead man Jay didn’t even commit. But as Tom stood there, sweat running off his whiskered chin, blood almost deafening in his ears, eyes strained and mercurial as he gave his own slow muted inspection of the terror meted out by his hand, he only felt the eyes of the others locked on him, he and hardly anyone else noticing as Dkembe backed out of the violated apartment and into the night.

  Tom gasped and fetched his eyes to the right like suffering a nervous tic, ignoring the onlooker Vegas cautiously inching away from him on the nearby sofa, Tom’s gaze instead falling upon his son’s openly terrified stare.

  He couldn’t meet Luke’s eyes, forcing himself just to breathe as he took in Attila, grim-set as usual, and Karla with a staunch but worried expression aimed his way. Vegas kept scuttling backwards until it demanded Attila’s attention, which by then saw Tom lower the deadly blade in his hand until the tip rested on the blood-splattered carpet.

  The movement drew his attention back to the bloody carnage he’d wrought. The sword’s tip dug into the rug only inches from Jay’s outstretched hand, his arm about the only part of his upper body not cleft into great awful ruddy chunks like a Sunday roast carved by a madman. A deep gash in the dead man’s neck and above his ear failed to split his skull, and though the cadaver just lay there for now with Jay’s eyes hooded in death, accusatory and with something of that final terror still clinging like spider-web to his face, Tom had to swallow deeply and thrust the tip of the heavy weapon directly into Jay’s face to still his quiescent brain once and for all.

  The gesture forced a choking sob from Vegas, now all the way off the couch yet somehow crouched down sitting still on the far side of the room, one hand raised, valiantly trying not to give in to violent shakes as Attila loomed and Lucas kept his rifle’s sight on him.

  Tom raised his hand woodenly to quell the panic.

  “No,” he said. It felt like a lifetime since he’d used his voice even though his throat and larynx burned for all his roaring. “Leave him. Stop.”

  Attila and Lucas backed off without moving their feet. Vegas’ eyes flitted rapidly between them, not even bothering to think he could make an escape and then slowly sedated by Tom’s confirmation he didn’t need to.

  Tom opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t get beyond the first pronoun. He lacked words for such a moment. He steeled himself to meet the other man’s horrified eyes, waves of that violence still within Tom like something tidal, Cyclopean, vast. He choked a noise, grieving in his own way too as his gaze skittered, coming back to Vegas again and again until he mastered it, the other man’s expression not slackening a bit, offering reflected back to Tom all the disgust and fear and black awe he already felt.

  “Tom?”

  Attila spoke. The heavyset man wore a fierce yet muted look, heavy brows and that accent underscoring the implicit demand for Tom to get his shit together. But the man he’d hacked to death just a minute before still had him stuck in his own impotence, Jay’s words echoing on and on in Tom’s mind, and now the terrible fatality of his murder meaning no more answers could be had.

  “Dkembe’s gone,” Karla said.

  Tom said, “Yes,” though he had no idea. He still gauged the room like an eighty-year-old man, dropping the sword to the ground for fear of collapsing as adrenal shakes coursed through him and he staggered away to the kitchen doorframe and braced himself while Vegas cautiously stood.

  “You just killed him, cold like that?” he asked quietly, the rebuke implicit without daring to raise his voice.

  “The Urchins came into our home,” Lucas answered. “They killed our friends. Children.”

  Vegas looked at the boy, the whole scene beyond Tom’s control momentarily as he tipped his head back trying to swallow in his parched throat, tears running down his face the only comfort as the reflex wouldn’t come, just leaving him standing there, retching in the back of his hoarse throat while Lucas wilted, unable to face the look Vegas gave him.

  Now, words weren’t needed – or again, they wouldn’t come.

  “Tom,” Karla said. “We have to go.”

  “What about Dkembe?” Lucas asked.

  Tom wheeled himself back into consciousness.

  “We have to find Locke,” he said.

  “Kevin.”

  Tom met Luke’s eyes. The boy nodded in confirmation. The terse look broke him, and Tom started losing control of his own juddery tears.

  All this emotional violence was enough for Vegas. He held up his hands, standing straighter as he backed away and made like he just wanted to escape the building despite living there.

  “You’re seriously out of control, man,” he said to Tom.

  Lucas hissed at his father. “Dad, keep it together.”

  It was the last thing Tom needed to hear, and coming from his son only sharpened the pain of it. Wretched sobs tore through and out of him. He collapsed to his knees just beyond the crime scene.

  Attila surrendered his sentry duties and shook his head as Vegas took that as his chance to leave. Then it was just the four of them in the blood-soaked room.

  Gore had shot against the wall leading to the kitchen and also spattered the nearest chair and cabinet. Tom took it all in, crucified by madness and sorrow and repulsion. The latest corpse was just a semaphore for all the rest – and those still to come.

  He stood.

  “We have to find L
ocke,” he said with a jaw that hardly let him. “We have to find Locke. Get your sister. And get out of here.”

  He threw his furious look to Attila and Karla watching.

  “The City. . . .” He shook his head, random words pouring out now. “It’s just . . . the destroyer . . . What we . . . what . . . what I have. . . .”

  It was too much for him to say it aloud. His own victimhood hit him like a lightning strike and he channeled all of it into his fiercest of looks. An iron will forced an expression of utmost deadly gravitas upon his face as Tom calmed.

  “I mean it,” he said to the pair. “I’m leaving the City, after this. With my children. You’re free to do what you want, but I think they’d take us. All of us.”

  Attila was too boggle-eyed to reply, which Karla did for them.

  “Who?”

  “Freestone’s Confederates,” Tom said. “It’s gotta be better than this.”

  Lucas started to say something, but Tom quietened him with a raised hand. Lucas flinched. Tom gasped and moved across and hugged his son, fighting back the temptation to give up right there completely and collapse once again.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said instead.

  Luke squirmed free as carefully as he could. Tom felt all their eyes on him and couldn’t lift his head. He motioned to where Jay’s carcass lay. No one needed to look again to understand him.

  “I just . . . lost it,” Tom said. “I know. I know.” He swore under his breath, realized Lucas was no longer beside him, and then he walked back and angrily retrieved Kent’s sword. “Fuck,” he growled again. “I’m . . . sorry doesn’t cut it, I know. It’s just –”

  “Fuck him.”

  “What?”

  Tom looked, shocked, back to Karla, the only one prepared to gesture to where OK Jay lay seeping his lifeblood into the living room rug.

  “Tom, they attacked us,” the woman growled in her own threatful way. “My lover is dead, Tom. Dead. They fucking murdered her. The Urchins. This Locke guy? I want my piece.”

  Then she gestured back to the dead man on the carpet.